How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

They probably belong in your family tree, right? Those families with your name, from your town. You have every reason to believe they're related to you.

But you haven't found that connecting ancestor yet.

You've got these disconnected families floating in your family tree file. They sit there, waiting for you to find the connection.

How easily can you find those families you added long ago, so you can work on finding out more about them?

Here's a solution I hope you'll try.

Use an image to identify unattached
people in your family tree at a glance.

I've written three times in the past about a software program called Family Tree Analyzer. I was astonished when I discovered this free program. It does exactly what I'd been struggling to write a program to do. But it does it better than I could ever have done. And it does much more than my program ever would have done.

Get the latest version of the program at http://ftanalyzer.com. You may need to uninstall the previous version before you can install this one.

Here's the feature I want you to look at. First, export a current GEDCOM file from your family tree software. Then launch Family Tree Analyzer and use it to open the GEDCOM.

Click the second tab, labelled Individuals, to see a line for every person in your tree. Go all the way over to the Relation column and click it to sort your people by their relation to you.

You'll see:

• Blood relations
• Relations by marriage
• Direct ancestors
• People married to your direct blood relations
• The root person (presumably you), and finally,
• Unknown

Unknown: these are the people in your tree who are not attached to you—whether by accident or on purpose.

If you can print to a file, go ahead and print this relation-sorted view. You can refer to it again and again, taking advantage of the search function of the digital file you created. Don't print to paper! It's going to be a lot of pages. Mine is 1,358 pages.

Click back to the first tab in Family Tree Analyzer for a second—the one labelled Gedcom Stats. Beneath the "Loading file" messages you'll see how many of each type of relationship you have. My file says:

Direct Ancestors : 189
Blood Relations : 1456
Married to Blood or Direct Relation : 543
Related by Marriage : 12480
Unknown relation : 4959

That last number, 4,959 unknown relations, comes as a big shock to me. That's a lot! How many families have I collected on speculation? Further inspection shows me that very distant, convoluted relations are labelled Unknown. That includes the father-in-law of a cousin of my sister-in-law.

Now you've got the list of unrelated people. This next tip came from someone else, but I can't remember who. I wrote it in a notebook which makes me think I saw it on a YouTube genealogy video. And I subscribe only to Ancestry.com's Crista Cowan, so this tip may belong to her.

Here it is: Create a graphic image (or borrow mine from this article) that says something like "No Relation". Attach this image to each person on your list of unknown relations who is truly unconnected to you. Make it their profile picture.

Now the unrelated people will be easy to spot. Better yet, in Family Tree Maker I can select that image from my tree's media collection and see a list of who it is attached to.

The goal now is to focus on these unrelated families. Do the legwork. Find out all you can about them, keeping an eye open for that missing link to you.

After some research, you may decide to remove some unrelated people from your family tree. Or they may become relatives.

And one day, you may find that your "No Relation" people are no more!

And speaking of Family Tree Analyzer:

• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"
• Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates
• How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree

When to Use Estimates in Your Family Tree

Estimates in your tree can help you avoid mistakes. See where they belong.

Family Tree Analyzer is a wildly useful, free program for genealogists. Each time I run it, I find something else I want to do with it.

Here's what I'm going to do with Family Tree Analyzer today.

This free tool offers countless ways to find the errors or missing info in your family tree.

A while ago, I created a policy to follow with my family tree. Every individual in my tree needs to have an estimated birth year and at least a country of birth. If I don't know when someone was born, I can:

• give them about the same birth year as their spouse
• subtract 25 from the year their oldest known child was born
• add 25 to their younger parent's age

Enter an estimated age in your family tree as "about" whatever year. Family Tree Maker, the genealogy software program I use, automatically abbreviates about as "Abt". Your software may handle this automatically, too.

Note: Whenever I enter an estimated date, I do not add a source. That way I know my own policy is the only source.

With an estimated age in your tree, you won't set someone born "Abt 1800" as the parent of someone born in 1920. It can also help you decide which of the 13 men named "Giovanni Pozzuto" in your tree is the one you're looking for. (And that's not counting all my Giovannantonio Pozzutos!)

Adding each person's likely country of birth and death is helpful, too. It can prevent a mix-up between a family that came to America and one that never left their mother country.

Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) makes it easy to see who in your family tree is missing a birth year and country. First, go to ftanalyzer.com to download the latest PC or Mac version. Launch the program and open your newest GEDCOM file. (I just realized you can drag and drop your GEDCOM into the FTA window!)

Once FTA loads your file, click the Main Lists tab. You may see a lot of empty fields in the BirthLocation and DeathLocation columns. In the BirthDate column, look for the word UNKNOWN.

Family Tree Analyzer helps you find everyone in your tree with no birth date—not even an estimate.

I've been on a roll lately, adding dozens and dozens of babies from my grandfather's hometown to my tree. So I have more than 22,000 people in my family tree. To make this task easier with such a big tree, I can click any column name in FTA to sort the results.

If I click the BirthDate column, all my UNKNOWNs group together. I'm happy to see I have only 11 of them. Those are usually people I added in a hurry, or while the dog was begging me for peanut butter. I can check all 11 people in my family tree and calculate their estimated birth year. It didn't take long for me to apply my rules and give each of the 11 people an estimated birth year and country.

Next, if I click the BirthLocation column in FTA, all the blank fields group together. Oh no. I've got tons and tons of blank birth locations.

When it comes to adding an estimated country of birth or death, there may be times when you want to keep it blank. Was the oldest child in a family born before or after the parents migrated? If you're not sure, you should leave it blank. Otherwise you might think you shouldn't look for that child on a ship manifest.

That's why I made another policy for the estimated birth or death country. If it's before 1850, I feel safe in assuming my relatives were born and died in Italy. There wasn't a lot of trans-Atlantic migration going on at that time. And my hometowns are so remote, and were so poor, that taking a ship somewhere wasn't an option then. I can assume my Angela Bianco—born in 1772 and died in 1836—was only ever in Italy. I may not be positive which town she was born in, but I feel sure it was in Italy.

Adding these unsourced estimates can help you avoid errors. And it tells FTA not to look in the Canada, Ireland, US, or UK Census for someone who was born and died in another country.

My own list of empty places of birth is overwhelming. It's something I've been more careful about recently. And I fix it each time I find someone with a blank location. Family Tree Analyzer is a good motivator for me to do a better job with so many aspects of my family tree. What can it show you today?

2 Ways to Give Your Family Tree a Checkup

Don't wait for an annual checkup for your family tree. Do it often.

Have you added any people to your family tree lately? Have you added or changed any facts? Then it's time for a checkup.

Even when you think you're being extra careful, mistakes can happen. Why not spend a few minutes every 2 months or so to find and fix your slip-ups? The things you forgot and the goofs you made will surprise you.

Here are 2 ways to give your family tree a checkup. You'll feel more confident about your tree after you've fixed some errors. You'll feel even more confident if you don't find any errors!

1. Run Family Tree Analyzer

The free Family Tree Analyzer program gives you one-stop shopping for all kinds of errors. Launch it, load your latest GEDCOM file, and click the Data Errors tab.

Check all the boxes to find these errors:

• Birth dates that are:
  
  • after the person's death
  • more than 9 months after their father died, or any time after their mother died
  • before either of their parents were 13 years old
  • after their mother turned 60 years old
• Death dates that are:
  
  • after their burial (yikes)
  • after they were 110 years old or more
• Marriage dates that are:
  
  • after the bride or groom's death
  • before the bride or groom turned 13 years old

Give your family tree a quick checkup with the powerful error finder in Family Tree Analyzer.

You may have what I call legitimate errors. For instance, I do have some babies who were born before one of their parents was 13. In one case, when I looked in my family tree, I found a note saying "The mother was 12 years old." That's more of an "unlikely" than an "impossible" feat.

I also have a baby born almost 11 months after his father died. But that's what the birth record says. I have a note wondering about the man who reported the baby's birth. Is it possible he was the real father?

If seeing all the errors at once is too much, click one checkbox at a time, and resolve or look into those errors.

2. Check Your Family Tree Software

The only family tree software I've ever used is Family Tree Maker. I hope that you're using desktop software for your family tree, and not keeping it only online. Building your tree online doesn't give you the same level of control. And you'll miss out on lots of features.

Every once in a while I check a few of the tabs in Family Tree Maker for errors. This time around I found several place-name errors. I'll bet they got messed up when I had a failed synchronization with Ancestry.com. But they were an easy fix.

In Family Tree Maker, look at these tabs:

• Check Media for images that are:
  
  • uncategorized
  • missing a caption, date, or other information
• Check Places to find any that are not properly categorized
• Check Sources to find any that have no facts associated with them

Each tab in Family Tree Maker gives you a different way to find errors.

If you give your tree regular checkups, your errors should be minor. Of course, your first checkup may be a bit of a shocker.

Make this a routine and keep your family tree healthy and hearty.

Report Finds Marriage Mishaps in Your Family Tree

Anytime you do a lot of work on your family tree, it's a smart idea to let Family Tree Analyzer have a look at it. This free software seems to offer me a new way to dissect my GEDCOM file each time I use it. And I've been doing a lot of work on my tree recently.

Last week I finished perfecting the citations in my family tree for these sources:

• 1851 England Census
• 1861 Census of Canada
• 1861 England Census
• 1871 England Census
• 1880 U.S. Federal Census
• 1881 England Census
• 1891 England Census
• 1900 U.S. Federal Census
• 1901 England Census
• 1905 New York State Census
• 1910 U.S. Federal Census
• 1911 England Census
• 1915 New York State Census
• 1920 U.S. Federal Census
• 1925 New York State Census

That adds up to 944 citations shared among family members found on the same census. Before I fixed them, a few sources had more than 700 citations each due to a catastrophic sync failure with my tree on Ancestry.com. I've given up trying to sync, but by next year I'll upload a clean version of my tree using a new tree name. I won't sync with it once it's uploaded.

Time for a Quick Check-Up

After all that editing, I wanted to see what Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) thinks of my latest GEDCOM file.

My GEDCOM Stats in FTAnalyzer had a strange line item telling me my family tree had some errors.

When you open your GEDCOM in FTA, you get a summary screen filled with basic facts about your tree. This time, I spotted something unusual. FTA said I had 4 lone individuals listed as single families. I needed to find them and see what was going on.

I found them by doing something I hadn't tried before. Usually I click FTA's Main Lists tab which opens to the Individuals tab. This lists everyone in your tree. But this time I clicked the Families tab next to the Individuals tab. I scrolled way to the right and found a column called Family Size. I sorted the data in that column from A to Z, putting all the families with a size of 1 at the top of the list. To my surprise, there were 41 families of 1.

5 Types of "Marriage Problems"

I opened my Family Tree Maker file and found each person from the FTA list, one-by-one. These "families of 1" fell into the following categories:

1. An unwed parent whose child's name you know from their birth record. In these cases, there's nothing you need to do. It really is a single-person family with a child.
2. Someone you meant to delete from the file but overlooked. Before you delete them, delete any of their citations or images. And detach them from an Unknown Spouse* if necessary.
3. Someone whose parents you deleted because you don't want to trace their family. (That's my in-law rule in action.) You may need to detach them from unknown parents. Otherwise leave them be.
4. Someone with a marriage date but no spouse. Take the time to search for the source of this incomplete fact and add their spouse. I've found Italian birth records with a marriage date, but no spouse's name!
5. A complete mystery, unattached to anyone, who you may as well delete.

*Unknown Spouse—As I worked through the list of 41 people, I found that many had an Unknown Spouse attached to them. Even babies who died young had these mysterious spouses. To see the unknown spouse in Family Tree Maker, go to a person's detail page. Then click Relationships rather than Facts or Timeline. If there is a partial marriage fact, delete it. Then detach the individual from their unknown spouse. Now the phantom spouse is gone from your file.

How many of these lurkers are hiding in your family tree? Here's how to find and eliminate them.

When I finished dealing with the 41 people with a family size of 1, I exported a new GEDCOM. Then I opened it in Family Tree Analyzer. Now I have 9 people with a family size of 1 because I made the decision to keep each of them. (Almost all are single parents.) The initial message from FTA saying I had 4 lone individuals listed as single families is gone.

This week I'll tackle my 1930, 1940, and 1950 U.S. Federal Census citations. Then I want to jump straight to the passenger lists of people coming through Ellis Island. Most of the immigrants in my family tree arrived in New York, so this is an important source to whip into shape. Then I'll continue working through my sources in alphabetical order.

After that, I have to deal with my countless Italian document citations. That's fine—I've wanted to work on those for a long time.

How Healthy is Your Family Tree?

If you've been working on your family tree for a while, you've no doubt gotten better at it with practice. That means your earliest work isn't as good as it should be. In my case, I know that censuses and ship manifests for my closest relatives are what I added first. And I'm fixing them as I work my way through my citations.

How did you begin your family tree? Were you searching for certain types of documents  first, like me? Did you begin with an inherited tree that someone else created? Take a look at the different reports FTA can offer you, such as:

• One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree
• Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates
• 4 Problems You Can Fix with Family Tree Analyzer

How to Find the Stragglers in Your Family Tree

I'm living in my 16th home, so I know a thing or two about moving. To lighten the load before you pack, you sort your stuff into three categories: keep, sell, or throw away.

We can use a similar rule on our family trees. I generated a list of unrelated people in my family tree. I fit each person into one of three categories: research, keep, or delete.

This started when a Family Tree Maker user asked how to find the loose (unrelated) people in her family tree. One person answered "Family Tree Analyzer" without an explanation. I launched my copy of the program and answered with these instructions:

Family Tree Analyzer is a free program that can analyze your tree in many ways. Export a GEDCOM from your tree and open it with Family Tree Analyzer. Once it's open, click the Main Lists tab and view the Individuals tab (the first tab). Scroll to the right to find the Relation column and click to sort by it. The "Unknowns" are your loose people.

I did this and exported my full list of people to a spreadsheet. Then I sorted and deleted everyone who did have a relationship to me.

Take a fresh look at the unrelated people in your family tree.

Now I had a spreadsheet of all the unrelated people in my family tree. I set out to categorize them as research, keep, or delete. I added a new column to my spreadsheet with the heading "Reason." As I worked my way down the list of alphabetized names, I added the reason they're in my tree.

For example, I had dozens of disconnected people with the last name Asahina. They're in my tree because of an undocumented connection to my husband's Ohama family. In the "Reason" column, I gave each of these people "Asahina" as the reason they're in my tree.

Other people are in my tree because my family says they are cousins, but the documents don't exist. I gave them a last name as a "Reason." They are either Saviano (my great grandmother's maiden name) or Sarracino (my great grandfather's name).

Now that everyone in the list had a particular reason to be there, I sorted the spreadsheet by the reasons.

• Some people were from my grandfather's hometown. I worked with vital records to figure out their connection. I had lots of success and deleted them from the spreadsheet.
• A couple of families were in the published 1742 census for my grandfather's town. I did some research, but I couldn't find a bridge between the civil records and 1742. I decided to keep these 12 people anyway.
• There were a few families of three: two parents and a baby. I searched for more of their children. Unfortunately, all the children died young. Without a marriage to build on, I could not connect this small family to anyone else. I deleted them from my family tree and the spreadsheet.
• When it came to the Asahina family, my own notes for two different people gave me the connection I was seeking. The story is, an Ohama family gave one of their babies to a childless cousin. As shocking as that sounds, it's a Japanese tradition. My own father-in-law was nearly given away! In the Ohama family, I'd entered a baby named _____ Asahina with a note saying, "this is the baby they gave away." In the Asahina family, I had attached a note to a woman named Masa Asahina. "A distant cousin says Masa is the Ohama baby given to the Asahina family." Hurray! I merged _____ Asahina with Masa Asahina, connecting the entire family. I removed them from my spreadsheet of unrelated people.
• I tried again to connect a Saviano clan to myself. The family says they are cousins, and I have no doubt of that. But their hometown didn't keep civil records before 1861. Their church records are lacking, too. I added some new documents and facts, but they are still loose in my tree. I will keep them there.

My family tree still has 161 unrelated people I've chosen to keep. Twelve are from the 1742 census of Grandpa's town. The rest are from the town without documentation. I'm OK with that. They all have a now-documented reason for being in my family tree. I'll be on the lookout to see if any distant cousins know more about them than I do. So far, they don't.

In the end, I researched everyone in the list to some extent, deleted a bunch, and kept 161 people. And that's how you sort out and lighten the load before you move on to more research.

If you use Family Tree Maker, use these settings to find the unrelated people in your family tree.

Someone else had a different answer to the "how to find loose people" question. They recommended Family Tree Maker's Kinship Report. With 29,000+ people in my tree, the report takes about 30 minutes to run, and it's 979 pages long. I can export to a spreadsheet by clicking Share, Export to CSV. Then, in Excel, I can filter the results to show only the "Unrelated" Relationship.

I recommend you go with Family Tree Analyzer for quick, useful, effective results. Then get moving and sort out your people.

2 Ways to Find the Loose Ends in Your Family Tree

You know all those things you left unfinished in your tree? No you don't.

With so many branches in your family tree, how can you find all the loose ends? How can you find every spot where you didn't finish searching for facts?

I have countless branches in my family tree. That's what happens when you piece together everyone who ever lived in your ancestral hometowns. Researching one of my grandfather's towns added 15,000 people to my tree. And now I'm working on the other grandfather's town.

Sound crazy? Think of it this way. I'm so familiar with every family name and street name from my grandfather's towns that the worst handwriting doesn't slow me down a bit. Plus, I had to work out every relationship in town to take Grandpa's branch back to the 1690s.

The whole time I was working on his town, I was dreaming of doing the same for all my ancestral towns. But before I add another 15,000 Italians to my family tree, I want to take the time to tie up some loose ends.

Here are 2 great ways to quickly see which birth, marriage, and death facts you're missing. These are loose ends you may be able to tie up.

1. Use Your Family Tree Software

I use Family Tree Maker, so you'll have to see how you can do this in your program. The idea is to sort your index of people by birth date, death date, or marriage date.

If you're reasonably sure of the year, you can search for the exact date.

In Family Tree Maker, your index of people is probably showing names and birth dates by default. If so:

• Click the pull-down menu next to the word "Sort"
• Choose "Birth Date"
• Scroll through your index and look for estimated or incomplete birth dates

If you want to look at Marriage Dates or Death Dates instead:

• Click the icon to the right of "Index" that looks like 3 vertical bars
• Choose "Marriage Date" or "Death Date"
• Click the pull-down menu next to the word "Sort"
• Choose "Marriage Date" or "Death Date"
• Scroll through your index and look for estimated or incomplete dates

With the list sorted, you'll easily see where you have:

• an estimated date (such as "Abt 1818"), or
• an incomplete date (such as "1836" or "May 1817").

On my computer I have vital records from my ancestral Italian hometowns for a certain range of years. If someone from one of my towns has "1863" as their birth date, I should be able to find their birth record. Then I can change the birth year to an exact date. Loose end tied up!

2. Use Family Tree Analyzer

If your family tree software doesn't have an easy sort feature, or your tree exists only online, have no fear. The must-have free program Family Tree Analyzer has got you covered.

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and:

• Load your latest GEDCOM file
• Click the Individuals tab
• Click the top of the "BirthDate" or "DeathDate" column to sort the facts
• Scroll through the list and look for estimated or incomplete birth or death dates

To examine marriage dates in Family Tree Analyzer:

• Click the Facts tab
• Select all "Relationship Types"
• Select only the "Marriage" fact
• Click the "Show only the selected Facts for Individuals…" button
• In the new window that opens, click the top of the "Fact Date" column to sort by marriage date
• Scroll through the list and look for estimated or incomplete marriage dates

You may find that you have a long list of incomplete dates. Whenever I have a big task to do, I like to whittle it down by going after the easy stuff. Pick that low-hanging fruit and shorten that list as much as you can.

If your family tree software can't handle this project, Family Tree Analyzer can.

For this project, I would first work on the dates that are a bit more certain. "1818" is more certain than "Abt 1818". I must have a source for that "1818", but the "Abt 1818" is an educated guess or guestimate.

Tackle the missing months and dates first. Then you can work on the harder-to-find estimated dates.

You won't find them all, so don't beat yourself up about it. But I'm sure you can shorten that list of loose ends. Most of them are loose simply because that wasn't your focus at the time.

For instance, let's say I was entering an exact marriage date for a couple. The marriage documents included birth records for the bride and groom. That gave me a source for each of their parents' birth years. Because I was focused on the marriage facts, I didn't take the time to chase after the parents' birth records. The result is 2 loose ends.

Before you begin your next research project, take some time to see what you've overlooked. Go back and tie up as many loose ends as you can. Those exact dates will help your research in the future.

How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

The mission of this blog is to encourage genealogists to improve their family trees. To fortify your family tree means to:

• Use the best sources for your facts.
• Locate as many pieces of documentation as possible.
• Analyze your tree for errors and fix them.
• Add thorough, consistent, provable facts throughout your tree.

This quick report lets me see the oldest direct ancestors in my tree.

The more your tree grows, the harder it can be to find its errors. Maybe you added lots of facts when you were first building your tree and didn't add any sources. Maybe you borrowed from someone else's tree and later realized they were wrong. Or maybe you accidentally transposed the numbers in a bunch of birth years.

Family tree errors can happen to a professional genealogist as well as an excited newcomer.

How can you find the errors when your tree is big and you've been working on it for years? How do you find a handful of needles in a haystack?

Reporting Software

Reporting tools can point out all kinds of family tree errors, showing you exactly where to jump in and start fixing.

I've written about the free software tool called Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) twice this year. (See Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer" and Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates to download the software and see what it's about.)

Get the latest version from the source: http://ftanalyzer.com. Go to the Software.Informer website for free GEDCOM analyzers that work on Mac or Windows.

I knew I'd barely scratched the surface of what FTA can do. Now I'm using it to identify a variety of errors I can fix in my family tree.

The first step is to run your family tree software and export a standard GEDCOM file. This is the agreed-upon standard that makes your family research transportable and sharable.

Then run FTA and import your GEDCOM. The first thing you'll see is a long summary of the types of facts found in your tree. My favorite part is this list:

• Direct Ancestors: 189
• Blood Relations: 1,451
• Married to Blood or Direct Relation: 541
• Related by Marriage: 12,452

Click the Data Errors tab. You might see a long list of errors. Some are more important than others, so click the Clear All button. Now click to select one type of error, such as Birth before father aged 13.

My tree has nearly 20,000 people, and I discovered the majority of them in old Italian vital records. Some of the documents had errors. Others had conflicting information. In tons of cases, I had no age or birth year for parents, so I chose to make them 25 years older than their oldest child.

For Maria Giuseppa Verzino, shown in this error report, I have evidence that she was born in 1799. But her father Paolo has a birth year of "About 1791".

Error report for seriously under-aged fathers.

I try to be very consistent in my family tree. Whenever I see "About" for someone's birth year, I know that I subtracted 25 from the birth year of the person's oldest child. But maybe I found more of their children later. Maybe when I found Maria Giuseppa and her birth year of 1799, I forgot to update her parents' birth years. Maria Giuseppa probably has a sibling born in 1816. When I recorded that sibling, I subtracted 25 from 1816 and marked the parents as being born "About 1791".

This is easy for me to fix. I can go to Paolo Verzino in my tree and see if I've found any children born before Maria Giuseppa in 1799. If not, Paolo and his wife's birth years should be updated to "About 1774".

That's one less needle in the haystack of errors.

Now uncheck that error and select another one, like Marriage after death. I have one of these errors. My family tree says that Giuseppe Antonio delGrosso was married on 11 December 1859. But I have his death recorded as "Before Dec 1859". That needs to be looked at.

Work Through the Errors

You can work your way through the errors and correct them one by one.

FTA contains a lot of tabs and menus. Click them to see what may be useful to you. The Facts tab can show all of your direct-line ancestors in a list. Choose only Direct Ancestors in the Relationship Types section. Then choose any fact, such as Birth. Click Show only the selected Facts for Individuals.

The resulting table shows me at a glance that I've identified two sets of my 9th great grandparents born in the early 1600s! I can click any column to sort by relationship, last name, date of birth, etc.

That isn't an error to fix, but it is a way to double-check my ancestor chart where I'm keeping a list of all direct-line ancestors. (See How to Visualize Your Ancestor-Finding Progress.)

So take a break from finding new ancestors, and make the time to fix the errors in your family tree. After you've fixed a bunch of them, export a new GEDCOM. Open it in Family Tree Analyzer and see how much shorter your errors lists are.

Fixing errors is every bit as important as finding that missing census file or death record.

Find out what else you can do with this free software:

• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"
• Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates
• How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree

Top 5 Uses for the Free Family Tree Analyzer

Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) is a free and powerful program from Alexander Bisset (see ftanalyzer.com). FTA has so many features that I've written about individual uses for the program many, many times. If you haven't tried it yet, here's a taste of the top 5 ways FTA can improve your family tree.

Family Tree Analyzer has unlimited abilities, and it's free.

1. Finding accidental duplicates

Your family tree may have hit a software glitch. You may have clicked the wrong fact type in a menu. Or you may have gotten a little loopy during a late-night genealogy session. No matter what the cause, FTA can find all your accidental duplicates. To create your list, read "Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates."

2. Finding missing source citations

Source citations help you as much as they help someone else viewing your family tree. How can you be sure of a fact when you can't remember where you found it? FTA can give you a list of all the unsourced facts in your family tree. You can create a list that ignores certain facts you don't want to source. For instance, I don't add a source for someone's sex.

Now that I've finished an all-consuming genealogy project*, I'm working on my missing citations. To find out how to do this, read "Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations."

* I finished my 6th (and possibly last) complete index of every available vital record for my ancestral Italian hometowns. They're free to download at www.forthecousins.com.

3. Finding inconsistencies in your family tree

No matter how long you've been at it, there will be inconsistencies in your family tree. Unless you're working at it day in and day out, you're bound to forget how you recorded a certain type of fact in the past.

I've always been an advocate for consistency. To me, consistency is a sign of good quality control. That's why I investigated some oddities FTA found when it opened my GEDCOM file. You can simply scroll down the Main Lists/Individuals table to spot wording that stands out. Sort by different columns and scroll on through. To find out what to look for, read "It's Time to Make Your Family Tree Clear and Consistent."

4. Finding all kinds of errors

No one wants their work to be messy, but it happens. If you'd like to find and fix your errors, here's a deeper dive for you. Take a look at all you can do by reading "One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree."

5. Finding missing details you need to research

Have you ever discovered a new treasure trove of genealogy documents? Nothing could be more exciting! Sometimes we add people and facts so fast that we overlook our mistakes. That's why we need FTA as our safety net. Find out how to use the program to point out all those missing facts by reading "How to Plug the Holes in Your Family Tree."

No matter where you are in your genealogy journey, FTA offers so many ways to improve the value of your family tree. It needs to be in your genealogy toolbox.

Search the Treetops to Focus Your Genealogy Research

My family tree has exploded to include more than 26,000 people. My grand mission—to connect Grandpa's entire town—is making it grow faster than ever.

When you've done a ton of research, it can be hard to see where your tree needs more work. And that's exactly what I want to know. Where should I focus to get the most bang for the buck?

I need a way to see exactly where the gaps are in my family tree.

Three ways to visualize these research gaps come to mind.

1. Grandparent Chart

My grandparent chart spreadsheet lists all my direct ancestors by their Ahnentafel number. I use color-coding to separate 4 main branches—1 color for each of my grandparents.

I've been good about keeping this spreadsheet up to date. But when I get to the higher generations, it takes a lot of scrolling to see where the gaps are. This tool isn't quite right for this task.

This Ahnentafel chart keeps tabs on the direct ancestors in my family tree. But it doesn't highlight the dead ends very well.

2. Family Tree Analyzer

I knew that the free Family Tree Analyzer tool has a report called Treetops. It lets you see the earliest known members of your tree on different branches. These are the people with no ancestors in your family tree. They are each the "treetops" of a particular branch.

This report still didn't give me the visualization I wanted. I was hoping to see the dead ends, to clearly see the gaps in my research.

The Treetops report in Family Tree Analyzer finds all the dead ends in your genealogy research. But it doesn't show where each person fits.

3. Family Tree Fan Chart

I thought a family tree chart might be just what I needed. I could have used the charting functionality of my Family Tree Maker software, but colors might be helpful.

I'd been thinking of revisiting Charting Companion by Progeny Genealogy to see if I wanted to buy it. Now was the perfect time to kill two birds with one stone.

I downloaded the free trial version to see what was new since I owned a very early version years ago.

After looking at a few types of charts, I realized a fan chart of all my direct ancestors is exactly what I need for this project.

An ancestor fan chart is just the thing to provide an instant, visual guide for your ongoing family tree research.

I created a chart of 9 generations of my ancestors. I printed it to a PDF so I can zoom in to read names, and I can see the color banding. I also printed a copy to my black and white laser printer. I trimmed the 4 pages and taped them together to make a big chart.

On the paper version, I used a highlighter pen to mark the treetops—the oldest known ancestor on a branch of my family tree.

Now I have a true visualization of the branches needing more research.

Each branch has its own challenges. On my maternal grandmother's branch, my research is cut off because there are very few vital records available for their Italian hometown. On other branches I've identified my 7th great grandparents, born between the late 1600s and early 1700s. Until I can access earlier church records, this is as far as I can go.

This exercise got me exactly what I wanted. It's an easy-to-read chart of my direct ancestors most in need of more research.

My ancestor fan chart, with all the treetops highlighted, becomes a road map for my family tree research.

My quest to piece together Grandpa's entire town is wonderful, but enormous. If I could focus that project on my direct ancestors first, it'd be more fun and inspiring. Three quarters of my paternal ancestors came from Grandpa's hometown. I can try to break through those treetops while working on Grandpa's hometown project at the same time.

Last week I finished a major task so I could work on Grandpa's hometown project. I renamed every available vital record from the town (Colle Sannita, Benevento, Italy) to include the name of the subject. Then I made an easily searchable text file and Excel file of all the data and published it.

Those renamed files make it as easy as it can possibly be for me to break through three quarters of my paternal treetops. If I can't find what I need, then I've done all I can with what's available.

Do you know where all your treetops are? Have you done all you can to expand them?

4 Ways to Safeguard Your Digital Family Tree

Imagine starting up your computer to add a new baby cousin to your family tree. But all you see is a File Not Found error. Nooooo! Panicked doesn't begin to describe how sick you feel.

I'm someone who curses a blue streak in the face of computer problems. I can't describe the pain in my head and stomach at these times. That's why I take extreme precautions with my digital family tree files. (And many other types of computer files, too.)

To avoid disaster, here are 4 crucial ways you can safeguard your digital family tree files. Get started before disaster strikes!

Keep your family tree safe in a virtual vault with these 4 methods.

1. Take advantage of cloud storage

Important! Your desktop family tree program should NEVER open your cloud-stored files. The cloud will try to update your file while you have it open, and corrupt your file. This happened to me.

You must open the file from a computer folder that does NOT get backed up to the cloud automatically. When you're done for the day, close your file and exit your software. Then you copy the family tree file and paste it into a folder that does get backed up automatically. Also, make sure your family tree software stores its own copy of every image you put in your tree. Don't point to their location if that location is a cloud folder; let the software make its own copy.

I use Microsoft Outlook for email, and Outlook will not let me work with a mailbox file that's on the cloud. My backup routine includes exiting Outlook and copying the file to a cloud location. This is true for other programs, too.

With that understood, you should use a cloud storage program for your non-active files. My Family Tree folder contains sub-folders for the types of documents I gather. These include:

• ship manifests
• censuses
• vital records
• naturalization papers
• draft cards
• and so much more.

These images are separate from those Family Tree Maker stores in your tree's media folder. (The media folder must not be on the cloud.)

I use Microsoft OneDrive because it comes with my subscription to Office 365. An added benefit of any cloud storage is that I can access any of my cloud files from my travel laptop.

To decide which cloud program is right for you, read "How to Back Up Your Family Tree Files Automatically."

2. Copy files to external drives often

Decades ago a client told me kept copies of his important information in 3 places. One of those places needed to be offsite in case of fire.

My cloud storage is the offsite location. My important files are on my desktop computer, of course. Plus I make a weekly backup to 2 one-terabyte external drives.

Each Sunday morning I back up my family tree, financial, and email files to these external drives. If you work on your tree a lot, a weekly backup is so important. I've had days where I added hundreds of people to my tree. I don't want to lose that much work!

To read about my backup routine, see "This 3-Step Backup Routine Protects Your Family Tree."

3. Export a GEDCOM after each session

I used to export a GEDCOM file from Family Tree Maker only when I wanted to do something in Family Tree Analyzer. Then I realized the value of always having an up-to-date GEDCOM. Now I export one at the end of each day's Family Tree Maker session. (You can export a GEDCOM from your online-only tree, too.)

When I'm done for the day, I export a GEDCOM and make 2 kinds of backup files: one with and one without all the media. My tree is so big that a backup with media is about 12 gigabytes, so I only keep 2 full backups and delete any older ones.

GEDCOM files use an industry-standard format. You can open it with any family tree software or upload it to a family tree website. It's so easy to export one, why wouldn't you do it after every session?

To see my full backup process, read "9 Steps to Really Safeguard Your Family Tree."

4. Publish your family tree in more than one place

A while ago I had a series of mishaps while trying to sync my Family Tree Maker file with Ancestry.com. Then MacKiev improved the FTM sync function dramatically. So I'm back to syncing every morning.

But when I had these problems, I stopped syncing my FTM tree with Ancestry for quite a while. I found another website, Geneanet.org, where I could overwrite my tree each day with a new GEDCOM. This now serves as a public-facing backup for my family tree. And it puts more international eyes on my research, too. The one thing I haven't been able to manage is to upload all my document images to Geneanet. The instructions don't seem to work for me, and I don't see how they make sense.

I won't put my family tree on any site that lets other people try to "collaborate" with or overwrite me. I made the mistake of putting my tree on Geni years ago. Each time someone wants me to update a person on Geni, I relinquish ownership of that person. (They're always people from a huge branch I lopped off years ago.)

To understand how and why to use Geneanet, see "A Major Family Tree Change to Fix an Ongoing Problem."

If you love genealogy, the loss of your research files would devastate you. Get busy and safeguard your digital family tree files today.

Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

In 2012 I had an idea for a genealogy program. I created a simple program called Census Taker to analyze your tree and produce a list of every person likely to be found in the newly released 1940 census.

It worked great for me, but it was limited. I studied Java programming, hoping to make the program better. I began rewriting my program, but time after time I ran into problems.

Then, suddenly, I found something in a Google search. A free program called Family Tree Analyzer that does everything I wanted my program to do—and a million times more. Goodbye, my fledgling programming career!

Programmer and genealogist Alexander Bisset makes it easy to analyze your family tree.

Family Tree Analyzer analyzed my 18,946-person tree without blinking. It provides a detailed table of each individual's facts in a flawless format that looks eerily like what I was struggling to do with my program.

The "Individuals" table helps you see what you're missing and plan your genealogy research accordingly.

It found every possible data error in my file. It found potential duplicate people. It let me export everything to a spreadsheet so I can fix the problems.

One small piece of what it does is like my Census Taker, but way better.

The Treetops button shows you the eldest person (or people) in your tree with a given surname. I entered my maiden name of "Iamarino". The Iamarinos at the top of 2 branches were born in 1640 and 1710. Awesome.

The Locations, Occupations and Sources tabs show how many people are associated with a particular source, place or job. I'll use it to find typos or places where I want to make the wording more consistent.

I've barely scratched the surface, but I strongly recommend you try this program. Family Tree Analyzer can provide you with all kinds of analysis to help you fortify your family tree.

Find out what else you can do with this free software:

• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates
• How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree
• How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree